I have previously stated that I have a “medium mind” but I haven’t really gone into that much detail about it and what it has the power to do. Firstly, I want to caution readers against starting to read this post with a closed mind as it really does involve the delusions that make me appear entirely crazy. It might seem overly descriptive of some TV shows and possibly movies but I want you to truly understand what makes the characters the ideal vessels in which my mind erects temples almost without my consent and awareness.
Cordelia Chase is a character from the popular 90s show, “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”, played by the stunning Charisma Carpenter. Her character in Buffy was a spoiled, vapid and cruel cheerleader and though this is where I first encountered her, it is her character in the spin-off show, “Angel”, that started to gradually leak into my mind and become the real P. Mistry-Norman.
Cordelia Chase played by C. Carpenter from “Angel” season five, episode: “You’re Welcome”
She is a brilliantly constructed character, marrying all the callousness you expect from the stereotypical popular cheerleader in a cult show with the grounding and plausible honesty and straight-talking. The changes that her character undergoes from the original to the spin-off series made me fall in love with her, which is how it always starts. I fall head-over-heels in love with the character and it doesn’t matter if they are male or female…it is not that kind of love! Then, before I am really aware what is happening in my twisted, little mind, I have stopped calling myself by my given name and am answering to imagined figures of Angel calling me Cordelia.
I have done this same routine with so many characters over the years ranging from Susan Pevensie from the “Chronicles of Narnia” to Lucrezia Borgia as seen in “The Borgias”. I will expand on how these delusions all start to come together and I eventually lose the ability to distinguish between where one begins and where another ends later but I just want/need to concentrate on Cordelia for today’s post. She lies at the very heart of my current cocktail of delusions and thus, she, Charisma Carpenter, Joss Whedon and everyone else who had a hand in making her into the main character that I use to survive are to be thanked right here, right now.
“Angel” is one of my top five favourite TV shows of all time. It has more edge and bite (and it should considering its lead is a vampire!) than “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”, plus it doesn’t have Sarah Michelle Gellar whining about something or other and how someone done her wrong in every single episode. As a tangent, with modern media concerning vampires, I find that I am always thinking that the lead female is an atrocious character (Elena from “The Vampire Diaries”, Buffy, Bella Swan from “Twilight”), though Sookie from “True Blood” is an exception – that girl has balls! I instead end up thinking the shows would be much more entertaining if one of the supporting female characters replaced them, like Caroline Forbes from “The Vampire Diaries”, Cordelia (who in fairness does end up as the female lead) and Rosalie from “Twilight”. These characters are all the better women and should be the recipients of more attention, but who am I to suggest that most of the producers of these shows are idiots?
Returning to the David Boreanaz hit show, I adored it from the premiere to the moment just before Darla got pregnant. Really, the arrival of Connor, the human progeny of two vampires, was ludicrous and turned the show which I deemed as brilliant into a farce. Usually, I adore the work of Joss Whedon, but this really made me wish I could pound his ginger head into the floor. The only redeemable aspect of the plot was that once Darla killed herself, Cordelia took on a maternal role to Angel’s son. When that happened, she became the ideal character for me to adopt. She became the perfect epitome of motherhood combined with a selfless saviour of the disenfranchised of LA and someone who would do anything for her friends and had the power to sacrifice everything. As Angel falls in love with her, she ends up being the female partner in one of the most beautiful love stories ever shown on television, for just as she realises she loves the reclusive vampire and chooses to act on it, she is swept up to a higher plain and Angel is sent to the bottom of the sea by his pubescent son who blames him – wrongly – for a series of crimes. It is the perfect case of waiting too long and then fate separating you.
When Cordelia returns, she has been possessed by a higher power that uses her body to have sex with Connor while Angel looks on and by this point I had stopped watching once it was inevitable. I have never been more disappointed in a TV show before and not even the cancellation of “The Borgias” got me as riled up as I was on the day I stopped midway into season 4 of “Angel”. A powerful, steady, motherly woman was turned into a despicable character that made me hide my face in my hands.
That there rounds off the character of Cordelia Chase nicely for you, but in my head she is the ultimate mother figure, the ultimate lover, the ultimate wife, the ultimate higher power. If I can use an aromatherapy allusion that my mother would love to explain clearly what she truly means to me that would be easier I think. Cordelia is the almond oil in the mixture, she provides the base for all the other lovely and gorgeous essential oils – the other characters – that are poured into it and meld together to create the perfect relaxation and healing unguent. The base matrix plot I have given to Cordelia to ensure that I am always going to be her, always going to speak with her voice, always going to be as strong as she was, is complex and twisted.
Firstly, she is the Great Mother, a divine figure who feels the births and deaths of every unborn child and mother in the world. Part of her powers also involve being able to have children and put them into play in any time, dimension, world, space (you get the picture?). This is how I manage to be Cordelia and yet still include other fictional and sometimes historical figures in my delusions at the same time. It’s made quite the family for me and I don’t feel alone so much anymore, not with the crowds of faces that I see around me in the dark and in my solitary, medium mind.
That’s it for today, but I hope you enjoyed this jaunt into my mind and found the further exposition of my medium mind as intriguing as I find it…as least when I’m writing about it anway!
LaBellaBorgia Speaks,
P. Mistry-Norman
05-02-2014
labellaborgia 